Faerie (39 page)

He felt her lips curve into a smile, then her fingers slipped between his legs to grasp his sac.

“Saints in Heaven,” he gasped.

She rotated his tender balls in her palm. All reason fled before heat and lust. He bent his head back and began to thrust his hips in earnest.

His shaft dipped into her mouth. He felt her suck up and down. One hand joined her mouth. Her hot tongue massaged him.

“Harder,” he begged.

She complied, offering him such presumptuous ecstasy that he wondered how he could be outside Heaven at the moment. All his focus tightened into one shiny coin at the base of his cock.

His vision exploded into gold. His senses gone, he mindlessly pumped his cock between her eager lips. His seed flowed into his wife’s willing mouth.

Her greedy swallows brought him back to himself, and he knew he’d never heard a sweeter sound than her taking his seed with such alacrity.

“Sweet bride, we’ve only just begun.” Gently, he pulled her away. “You are the most beautiful woman who ever lived,” he whispered, reaching for her small, perfect breasts. “We are built so perfectly for one another.”

Her eyes widened when she felt his fingers plucking at her nipples. “I feel that in my womb, sir knight.”

“And lower?”

She smiled naughtily. “I am wet below. Is that to your pleasure?”

Her lusty nature drew him like a bee to a spring flower. “Greatly,” he said. “Do you think I can put a child in you today?”

“Anything is possible, my beloved.”

He grinned at her sexy wink. “Would you want that?”

She let her head fall back. Her hair curled and danced down her slender spine. “Pleasure me, husband. Let the rest come as it may. I can think of nothing but tupping and tupping and tupping again.” She laughed aloud.

He let his fingers drift down, between her breasts, past her navel, down her belly, into her wiry golden curls. “Shall I take you fast, then? I thought to sup from you first.”

When she said nothing to differ, he tugged her forward, pulling her legs until they rested on his shoulders, the nub of her pleasure at his mouth. “Ah, yes, you are a feast.”

She cried out, wriggled away, then her soft flesh was full against him. “Again,” she begged.

This time, just as he suckled her, he found her opening with his finger and pressed in.

“Sweet Lord!”

His wife convulsed around him, sending a thrill of joy through him. He had made her work much harder for his pleasure. But this only meant she was ready for his shaft all the sooner.

She laughed hoarsely, her body still quivering. “You are a beautiful man,” she whispered.

When she had stopped shuddering, he set her gently on the bed, then moved over her.

“Now?” he asked, feeling cool linen underneath his knees.

Her eyes were unfocused. “Now,” she agreed. “Give me all of you.”

He found her channel, then pushed in gently. His lips found hers and then he entered her mouth with his tongue. He meant to thrust it in time with his shaft, but her tongue swirled around his, joining them intimately. She stroked his back with her fingers and her slim legs wrapped around his buttocks, then slid higher until he felt enveloped in warm, scented femininity.

She liked speed, showing him by the undulations of her hips, so he gave it to her. In and out, slick heat surrounding his hard shaft, his buttocks working under her hands, her fingernails digging into his flesh, her little cries of delight urging him on. Indeed, she was a gloriously wanton creature. His previous ejaculation meant he could last longer this time, so after a while he flipped onto his back, just in time to prevent her from a second climax.

“Oh, Philippe,” she protested. “Don’t stop!”

“Ride me, beloved wife,” he said, “as if I were your warhorse.”

“With pleasure, sir,” she said as her hips moved on his broad body with all the grace of a dancer.

Only moments passed before he grasped her hips with his fingers, holding her tightly. “I cannot keep this pace in your tight sleeve without losing myself to you.”

“We are in the Summer Land. Anything can happen here.” She clenched him in her velvet mail, grinning with naughty purpose, and squeezed rhythmically until he lost himself inside her.

He felt her shudders and knew he’d taken her with him. The juices of her pleasure mingled with his seed on his loins. How perfect they were together, and how he wished he could live and have every night be like this.

He slept only as long as it took her to find the will to circle his shaft with her mouth again. If he could break a curse with the power of lovemaking, he was certain they could overcome any obstacle. But it would not come to pass. Aye, Rufus was right—he would give anything to save his dearly beloved. And that would brand him a traitor to any king.

“I have always loved you,” Leonie said, drowsing so close to dreaming she was nearly gone.

“I cannot remember not loving you now,” he replied. “It was a different world, a different time. I will keep you safe. I swear with my life.”

“I know.” Her lazy fingers gave one last attempt to run through the crinkly hair on his chest, then stilled.

He tugged his lady wife close, silently sending up a prayer to God that he hoped she did not hear.
Please let me get a child on her in this strange place. Give her hope for a future, since I have none. Make it a good birth, to show another, better man that she can bear strong sons, and help her find a place in this troubled world.

It had been a day of horrors, of salvation, of revelation. He knew now what she had struggled so long to keep secret, and in some strange way it made sense. It was what she was that the demon sorcerer wanted from her, and he wanted her alive, else he would already have killed her. She was right, that demon and Fulk had to be the same. But she was strong, and she was smart, and she would have Rufus and Robert de Mowbray on her side.

So now he knew her secret, that she was Faerie. But one dread puzzle remained:

How had he done the things he had done?

What was he?

P
ATIENCE HAD NEVER
been Rufus’s best virtue. He did not, in fact, have any virtues that he could recall, unless it might be that he always did what he believed was best for his realm, regardless of what any others thought. Nor, he mused, did he care what anyone else thought about anything. He was, after all, the king.

But back to the patience, of which he had none. He stood on the ramparts of the unfinished stone curtain wall at Bosewood and frowned out at the horizon, back to the village below the castle, and once again the forests beyond, waiting. He was losing patience even with losing patience.

Something had to be done. But what? The Peregrine had been gone seven days, and no word from him. Rufus had sent out searchers, but no word came back. He had even called on de Mowbray, his most reluctant ally, for the man had a stake in Lady Leonie’s life, and in this he knew this most selfish Black Earl would die to save her if he must. A queer situation, but there it was, and Rufus was not one to fail to use such an opportunity.

But God preserve the saints, a full week! He could not hold Durham and his treasured knight, that bedamned Warrior of God, at bay any longer. He had run out of excuses. And if he let them into Bosewood, they would all too quickly discover Leonie had fled her husband, and the husband had followed her into the wilderness. Rufus had a sense for danger, and that sense told
him Durham was not to be trusted, even if the evidence had not confirmed his suspicions.

Seven days! If Fulk had captured Leonie, he would have the weapon he needed. And Philippe would be slaughtered for it. But who knew whether Philippe had not simply turned his horse toward Scotland, abandoning them all? If only he knew more.

Yet he could not make himself believe Philippe would betray him. A man should never hold his family more dear than his king, aye. But how many reasons had his own father had to tell him a king must never have friends?

If he, Rufus, had been merely a knight and not a king, if a lady such as the enticing Lady Leonie had ever loved Rufus, would he not have sacrificed anything, even his fealty to his liege for her?

He laughed cruelly. He knew the answer. He knew no such lady would ever love him, but if she did...aye, he understood Philippe le Peregrine all too well.

If only he knew
something
.

In the castle bailey he spotted that little blacksmith’s son dashing around like a scurrying little rat. Rufus admired energetic people. Too bad about the boy’s great ambition. His grandfather’s taint had been too great, too awful. The boy was fortunate his father had been allowed to live and become a blacksmith.

But, Rufus thought, as he rubbed his newly bristling chin, the boy was a bit like the crone. He knew things. Rufus had allowed the boy to come with his brother to Bosewood just for that purpose. He was a born snoop.

He nodded, as if somehow he must confirm his own thought. “Boy!” he shouted down to the bailey.

The boy skidded to a halt and turned to stare up at the rampart, then remembered to bow. “Aye, Sire?”

Rufus beckoned with a hand that circled in the air. The boy ran to the steps and climbed to the rampart, then stopped short and fell to his knees. Ah, his manners had improved.

“Up,” Rufus said, knowing the growl of impatience would probably be mistaken for royal displeasure. He motioned for the boy to join him in his quest for the invisible out there somewhere.

“You know something,” Rufus said, now breaking eye contact.

“Nay,
Beau Sire
,” the boy replied. “I’m just the blacksmith’s brother.”

“Brother to one, son to another. I know your story, boy. And I know the Lady Leonie has a special interest in you. If anyone knows what happened to her, you would.”

He watched the boy’s gaze shift to either side so quickly a less astute observer would have missed it. “Aye, I see I am right. Well, then, let me tell you what I know. Do you even know who the lady’s mother was? Not her name, but what she was?”

The boy’s expression changed to an odd frown with one eyebrow rising rather high.

“I see you don’t,” Rufus said. “Tell me then, does the lady have a strange way of disappearing, haps as if she has walked through a wall?”

This time the eyes widened. Fear was what Rufus saw now. But fear for what?

“She vanished, lad. Beneath our very noses. I see you will pretend you know nothing, and I value your loyalty for your lady. So I will continue to tell you, and you will listen. She does indeed have that ability, and I believe she came by it through her mother’s unusual heritage. It is of no mind to me or to you, but we must not share that knowledge with anyone.”

Rufus started down the steps, the boy tagging along as if the two of them were tied together. “But we must find them. Each hour they remain in the wilderness alone they are in more danger. Yet I cannot tell what we must do about it. There is one other who might help us, but I do not know how to find her. Have you seen a very old woman about? Very tall and
unusually thin and haggard, hair like old straw? Wears a green mantle?”

“Aye, Sire, I saw her once, the night of the wedding. But not since.”

“The wedding, you say.” Aye, of course Herzeloyde would attend the wedding she had demanded of Rufus.

“Aye, Sire. She spoke to the Peregrine. Called him Norman lord, said something about his winding path. She’s a strange one,
Beau Sire
, strange.”

“Aye, so she is, lad,” Rufus replied. “I want you to help me find her.”

“But I don’t know where to look, Sire.”

“If you had to find her, where would you begin looking?”

“The village, I guess.”

“Then let’s go.” At the last step, Rufus landed on the hard-packed bailey, already breaking into a fast pace, headed for the gate.

“But, Sire, they will not tell. I mean, I think they don’t know. I heard the Peregrine—I mean, my lord of Bosewood—ask the Earl of Northumbria, who told him no one knows where she lives.”

“But the Peregrine found her. He told me so. This is important, boy. She’s the only hope we have. They’ve been gone too long, and I fear if we don’t go to their aid they won’t come back. It may already be too late. So I ask you bluntly, and expect a truthful answer. Will you protect your lady? You’ve done it before, so I ask now: Will you do anything to save her?”

Sigge’s bright blue eyes widened and he swallowed what looked to be a very large lump. “Aye,” he said. “You mean Leonie.”

“She’s in great danger. She was my ward, and the Peregrine is very important to England.”

“He’s your friend, right?”

“I have been doing some thinking on that. Kings must not have real friends, I’m afraid. A king cannot know if one day he might have to sacrifice someone he loves for the sake of his kingdom. And who can tell when a friend might use the friendship for treachery? But I do not want anything bad to befall either of them. Worse than that, though, it could be the entire kingdom that is at stake. She must not fall into enemy hands, nor must the Peregrine.”

The boy’s eyes shifted around again. And Rufus saw that the only way to manipulate the boy into giving up what he knew was to play the trustworthy, caring, fatherly sort, as he had at Brodin.